Around the world, communities are striving to become greener, creating more eco-friendly, sustainable ways of living their day-to-day lives. In the Kansas City area, creating sustainable gardens has become a mission of the urban and metro areas; one of the leaders in this initiative is the Giving Grove, a Kansas City community-based organization with the goals of furthering this initiative of sustainable gardens. The Giving Grove’s mission is to “improve local food security and strengthen communities by bringing together the resources to develop edible tree gardens.” Many of their projects involve partnering with schools, churches, or other community organizations to plant sustainable micro-orchards, mostly apple, pear trees and Asian Pear. Just in the past year, this organization has partnered with the Lee’s Summit Parks Department; the Kansas City, MO Parks Department; the Johnson County, Missouri, Board of Services; and countless schools and churches ranging from Lee’s Summit to Shawnee. Many partnering organizations have also been involved in evaluating the best cultivars considering: resistance to disease, adaptability to the Kansas City climate, storage life, flavor as well as other growing considerations.

One of the very important factors in producing healthy trees and maximizing production is the need to spend special attention to soil biology – which flourishes with the health and diversity of biological organisms in the soil and the avoidance of using harmful chemicals. In addition, when it comes to using approaches to organically (or holistically) manage disease and pests, orchard health can be effectively encouraged by the use of what is referred to as a holistic blend of neem oil, unpasteurized liquid fish and a diverse blend of benificial microbes as a means to stimulate the tree immune function. To help lessen the economic burden of providing this important nutritional brew for the Giving Grove orchard trees, SCD Probiotics donated our product, SCD Bio Ag®. . The donation made by SCD Probiotics helped dozens of neighborhood orchards take advantage of this combination of holistic brew, so that they can grow and distribute - thousands of pounds of healthy and organically grown produce.